Sir John A Macdonald Day

By BC Green Party · January 10, 2014

10

January 2014

January 11th is Sir John A. Macdonald day. 199 years ago, in 1815, Sir John was born in Glasgow, Scotland. As one of the founders of our nation, and Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald played an integral role in the bringing together East and West parts of Canada to form the Great Coalition leading to the birth of our nation on July 1, 1867.

As Canada’s second longest serving Prime Minister (19 years), Sir John oversaw many of Canada’s early accomplishments, including uniting Canada with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was completed with the driving of the last spike at Craigellachie, BC.

Sir John understood the need for separate parties to see their common interests and work together to see those goals met. This is a quality that all of us, as Canadians, can see the benefit in.

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I will look up that book next time I am at the library. A book that I suspect would never had been written had it not been for the system of governance that Sir John had put into place. I suppose my point is this, without our founder the aboriginal people WOULD have been wiped out and forgotten.
Thank you for the title, I am intrigued and looking forward to reading a different perspective.

Michael J Preston commented
2014-01-14 21:07:01 -0800

To clarify, I try to be thankful for all the richness in my life from my family, my career, community, province, and country. I acknowledge that I have had the benefit of the Canadian context that I grew up in.
Respectfully, I think it is important to look at history through a different lense and look to understand different perspectives and different stories that have not been told. I do not condemn Sir John; however, the system that was put in place at his time and under his leadership is hugely problematic today. Canada continues to be destructive environmentally and continues to operate within a divide and conquer “democracy”; as well as not honoring treaties, as Neil Young points out.
What to do with the child killing the spider?.. but teach the child about the value of spiders.
Some learning that I have had lately:

To clarify, I try to be thankful for all the richness in my life from my family, my career, community, province, and country. I acknowledge that I have had the benefit of the Canadian context that I grew up in.
Respectfully, I think it is important to look at history through a different lense and look to understand different perspectives and different stories that have not been told. I do not condemn Sir John; however, the system that was put in place at his time and under his leadership is hugely problematic today. Canada continues to be destructive environmentally and continues to operate within a divide and conquer “democracy”; as well as not honoring treaties, as Neil Young points out.
What to do with the child killing the spider?.. but teach the child about the value of spiders.
Some learning that I have had lately:

@michael Preston
That’s probably true. I honestly don’t know much about that. Though a child’s reaction to a spider is to kill it, not knowing that that spider is keeping the fly population down. Can we really condemn historical persons for doing what they thought was right, and for the day was a normal thing? Something that everyone was doing not thinking twice about it? In hindsight it was a deplorable thing to do. As was slavery, as was killing the whales, as was giving nicotine to soldiers, as is the marketing of unhealthy foods. As a species we learn from our mistakes. Sir John did and helped create a democracy, in doing so he gave us the ability to look back and realize that we had done somethibg REALLY wrong. Do you honestly think we could have done that under another form of government?

Michael J Preston commented
2014-01-13 18:58:54 -0800

Sir John also did nothing when policies of the states were to exterminate the buffalo and used this destruction of a species to exploit the starvation and disease of the first nations peoples of the prairies. He created or oversaw the implementation of the racist legislation of the Indian act and ensured that native cultures were on the way to seemingly destruction

Steve Hurrell commented
2014-01-11 10:04:58 -0800

Now there was a guy that believed in the sysyem called democracy. I wonder what he would say if he saw the broken system that was created after his death?